Our biggest problem

[Asgaya Dihi]

I'd like to ask you guys to do something if you agree about the scale of this thing, I'm having a hard time getting it through here without getting caught up in partisan bickering. Maybe some of you can, it needs to be done.

Our biggest problem in this country today, and in the world, isn't the war in Iraq or anything else. They are symptoms of the problem, not the root. We need to get it through to people exactly how widespread the impact of the drug war really is and stop fighting and talking about just the symptoms. This is likely to be a long post, so bear with me ok?

The United Nations estimated around 1998 that the illegal international drug trade was approximately 400 billion dollars a year, or about 8% of all international trade. That's in a market that didn't even exist before the drug war and now every penny of it is going either to terrorists or one sort or another of organized and random crime. A letter that references the stat and explains some of that impact can be found in the right hand column of the following web page, and the list of signatories is impressive.

http://www.dpft.org/voices.htm

This is in a world where men with box cutters on a shoestring budget took planes and where expensive tanks can be taken out with a cheap armor tipped grenade with a rocket attached to its ass. They don't need a lot to start with, and we make sure they are well financed. We created the market, we can remove it if we'd just regulate the stuff ourselves.

The impact is here at home too, three pages that should get the impact of that through follow. First is our prison population as of 2004, and an international comparison of us and other nations. We're the single most imprisoned nation in the world bar none, and the next closest isn't even close. Among nations more similar to us we lock people up at a rate 5 to 8 times higher than they do. It's not pretty.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/1044.pdf

The second is a page that shows the growth of that system, in 1972 we were just an average nation in these terms but today we're the world leader and an image near the top of this document clearly graphs our prison population from about 1925 to 2002. It was roughly in line with population growth for decades, and then explosive growth that still hasn't stopped.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/pub9036.pdf

The third is the ugliest one yet, that growth has not been even among us. A few highlights for you, while whites are locked up at an overall rate of 393 per 100,000 blacks are locked up at an overall rate of 2,531 per 100,000. It gets worse. Young black males are locked up at a rate of 12,603 per 100,000, that's one in eight currently behind bars or 12.6% of them.

http://www.prisonsucks.com/

That's not due to higher crime rates as such so much as it is to things such as safe school zones which hit urban areas harder than suburban areas. There's a lot more ugly aspects to the system as well such as the shifting of the census population from the troubled neighborhoods that these people are removed from and offering that political representation, funding and power to their jailers. That hurts the poor and the system as a whole and encourages the growth of the system for its own sake. How that works is detailed some at the following.

http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/

Now with an understanding of how many young black men are really behind bars, let's consider the reasons for what we see in those neighborhoods today. That's a lot of poor incomes from struggling single mothers and the hampered educations and chances of success for their kids, and the ones they might raise. With less funding for the neighborhood as well due to the policy mentioned above. When those young men are released from prison they won't be the same people they were going in, prison changes you and not for the better. It's also an awful lot of lost tax revenue, rather than these people paying taxes we're paying huge amounts to hunt them down and lock them up, often for petty reasons that might have drawn probation or treatment if they were someone else.

Our drug war has strong ties to terrorism, to poverty, to education, to crime and the growth of gangs, to our budget problems, and to other aspects I'm sure I haven't mentioned here yet. And it's all a choice, something we decided to do and can decide to stop in favor of regulation. As Jack Cole, a former narcotics cop who has worked terrorism is quoted as saying, drugs are just too dangerous to leave in the hands of criminals. Better that we regulate and control them ourselves.

If you can think of a single issue, a single choice, that has more impact on our lives and that we can change whenever we decide to do so I'd love to hear it. This looks like our biggest problem to me, and we need to get others to understand that as well.

[EC]

1. De - Criminalize them all and handle it medically

The war on drugs was created to hide covert operations and to make covert cash...by our government as well as others....

[Mythsaje]

2. Ain't no joke...

This is stuff the "left" should be trumpeting from the rooftops. Will it happen? Doubt it.

[Asgaya Dihi]

4. Not soon, but

I'm hoping it will happen eventually.

There's an old quote that I love, it explains my attitude on the subject well enough.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. -Margaret Mead

The thing is we've let ourselves be bullied. Too often the talk is shifted to the idea that we're trying to defend drugs or something, and properly applied regulation should actually reduce use and the associated damage. As an example, what if we stopped locking up heroin addicts and offered it to current addicts only and by prescription only? Wouldn't that strip the streets of customers for dealers who are hooking new victims, strip the terrorists of funding for every addict moved from them as a source to us, and put them in contact with medical professionals instead of dealers?

It's not just a theory anymore, it's been tried on a small scale and works real well. Two links on the subject for reference.

System perspective
http://www.dpft.org/heroin.htm
Addict in a separate study
http://www.dpft.org/anaddictsstory.htm

It's not just theory anymore, and it's not just activists and intellectuals anymore. Now there's cops, judges, prison wardens and others coming out for us.

LEAP: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition - Homepage
http://www.leap.cc/

Judges Against The Drug War
http://www.judgesagainstthedrugwar.org/

Religious Leaders for a More Just and Compassionate Drug Policy
http://www.religiousleadersdrugpolicy.org/

We're making progress, and it started with a few committed individuals who most thought were nuts at first. Now there's more of us, with a developing record of results to show, and we're starting to get press. We just need a few more committed individuals, that's what it always comes down to in the end. Can't let ourselves be bullied into silence.

[RufusEarl]

3. Agreed, illegal drugs pose a great threat to the planet.

I for one would vote to disband the war on drugs, and to decriminalize drugs. Michael Ruppert has written about this subject, " you can google M. Ruppert" and he's of the opinion that the drug wars have been a CIA operation to finance the US economy.

Of course this is all theory, but Ruppert also goes on to say the reason our prisons or full is to disenfranchise a large segment of our population. The disenfranchised can no longer vote in many cases, and of course they usually in up on the streets of our community's to scare the hell out of little old women and me.

But i agree, we could do allot better with policies that deal with drugs better then what we've been doing for the part 40 years.

[sweetheart]

5. It is the biggest problem

But it is big business, and i no longer believe that
government is in any way good. The drugs war, and that
they *KNOW* the evil hardship they cause with their war,
leads blair and other drugs nazis like bush and his
cabal to repeat their mantra of war against their
own people, their own poor... drugs war for fools.

[A Proud Liberal]

6. The (Un?)intended Effects of the "War on Drugs"

Whenever an administration declares renewed efforts on their "War on Drugs,” there is the usual list of platitudes; “Drugs are a scourge on the country.” “The worst threat our young people face.” The newest of these is, “Drugs are a major source of funding for the terrorists.” This last has been so debunked that the ads featuring this premise have virtually disappeared. It was not debunked to the point that conservatives don't believe that the average joint smoker is bin Laden's greatest supporter. This also ignores the fact that Afghanistan has become the largest supplier of heroin in world, a country funded by narcotics because of our war on terror. History has shown the real reason for the "War" is distraction. Starting with the Johnson administration and continuing with administrations from both parties it has been considered a "safe" issue that no one would oppose, lest they be called moral degenerates or worse. The "War" is not emphasized until an administration's other policies and poll numbers are in the toilet. This distraction ploy is so well recognized as to be non-controversial and always used as an argument against spending more money and resources on a "War" we can never win.

These are the outward and visible signs of discussion. I believe that there are two less obvious but much more insidious motivations behind the "War" and its associated laws and law enforcement efforts. Both involve keeping the poor and people of color ‘in their place.’ The first is stopping higher education in its tracks. Anyone convicted of a drug related offense has a lifetime ban on receiving Federal funds for education, including both grants and loan guarantees. Many states have followed suit with similar restrictions. Both levels of government restrict public assistance after conviction of a crime, especially drug related. With the poor and minorities much more likely to be convicted of these crimes, this virtually assures that that the cycle of poverty and ignorance will continue unabated. This is race and class discrimination at its ugliest.

For all their anti-union rhetoric, the Conservatives have a favorite union. This is the prison guard unions and associations, with their extremely well funded PACs. In California, these PACs are the single largest contributor to political campaigns. A union’s primary function is to ensure the continued existence of jobs for its members, closely followed by creating new ones. Well over half of the prison population is there for drug related crimes. The need for prisons and prison guards is driven by the number of prisoners. The politicians get two benefits, looking tough on crime by supporting new prison construction and contributions from the PACs. Many states disenfranchise convicts, again favoring Conservatives. The added nasty fact is that prison guard is the employment haven for the sadists and racists among us.

So the next time you hear about the “War on Drugs,” fully consider just what you may be supporting.

Offend a Conservative -- Use Your Brain.

[DrBloodmoney]

7. very nice post

I hate to be a defeatist, but I have all but given up hope that the War on (People)Drugs will ever be ended. There are too many groups and special interests that have deeply entrenched financial interests in maintaining it. Plus, coming out against the WOD is political suicide.

Without a legitimate third party in this country, we'll never see an end to it.

[Uppanotch]

8. I agree, and it's unlikely there'll be a viable third party anytime soon

The reason is because only a tiny number of individuals will donate to a political party that ISN'T beholden to rich people and large corporations.

[sweetheart]

9. Hire Olmert to take over the war on drugs

Then the air force can bomb every bridge and power station in the USA until the price of
cocaine drops by 50%. All passenger cars are to be bombed as well, as everyone knows
drugs are transported by civilian transport, all infrastructure is now a target.

This is providing exciting new opportunities for war at home, to increase the drugs war
to a full scale war so that arms manufacturers are not discriminated against in the
equal opportunity of it all.